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BLOG The Changing Face of Football Data

23 December 2012

Over the past decade the world of football data has changed
beyond all recognition.

Once the preserve of Championship Manager obsessives and
hardcore fans, data and stats have made their way firmly into the
mainstream - and affect the way the game is covered, analysed and
played across the world.

So, how have we arrived at this point, and where next for
football data?

In my opinion there are three major drivers behind the evolution
and development of football data. These are:

The changing nature of the football fan

More platforms with more space to fill

A quicker, more detailed data supply

I'll cover how each of these factors have contributed
individually:

The changing football fan

Throughout history, being a football fan has been associated
with attendance at matches. The support for a team would be
passed down from father to son through the ritual of standing on a
terrace on a Saturday.

The level of your support would be defined by how many games you
went to and whether you supported the team home and away.
Your season ticket would be your badge of honour.

Over the last twenty years this has dramatically changed.
The mass increase in TV coverage of football means that interest,
knowledge and fandom now no longer requires attendance at the
matches. People attending games are massively in the minority
of the overall number of people who claim to be football fans.

This means that the expectations of football fans have
changed.

This new breed of fan consumes football like a TV show, more
akin to Eastenders than anything else. Coverage of football
is focused on developing narratives, before, during and after the
matches. There are heroes and villains, storylines and
cliffhangers.

In this world, data, statistics and information have a massive
part to play in helping to create, shape and prolong the
narratives.

More platforms, with more space to fill

To follow football, it used to be important to pick up the
newspapers the day after a match. Each game would have a
report, differing in size depending on its importance.
Supplementing that was usually a round up page, with scores,
scorers and attendances from the top handful of leagues.

Added to that you had radio coverage, with commentary of one
main match and half-time and full-time round ups from the other
games.

If you wanted to watch a match on TV, you had the game you were
given (usually, in my memory Everton vs Spurs) and then highlights
of the others on Match of the Day.

And if you missed your window, that was it until the next
week.

Being a football fan required some level of investment to be in
the right place at the right time throughout the season. The
knowledge you had as a fan was very much earned.

But with the increasing coverage of football on TV came at the
same time as an increase in the ways for media to report on
it.

Over a short period of time, we went from having a select number
of opportunities to follow football to being able to keep abreast
of the action every minute of every day, with coverage from all of
the leagues around the world.

Televised football broadcasts now have longer, more in-depth
shows requiring a deeper level of analysis. Traditional media
have printed pull-outs with pages and pages of coverage. Even
radio stations have dedicated reporters at every main game, with
updates on the action up to a dozen times per game.

Add to this the internet, with no restriction on space or
layout.

Football has become about more than what happens on the pitch.
The debate around the game has extended it to become a 24/7
topic of conversation and the media has reacted to satisfy the
demands of its audience.

Coverage can be tapped into regardless of location or
device. You no longer follow football, it follows you.

And with this thirst for information, and proliferation of
opportunity comes a desire for more in-depth information. And
the world of data and stats has grown to support this.

Whereas 20 years ago it would have been difficult to find out
what the score was if you were out of your house, now you can find
out, in real-time, how many passes a particular player has
completed during a game.

A quicker, more detailed data supply

So we have a world in which the fan expects and demands more
information, and the publishers can provide the space and platforms
on which to consume the data.

The third important step was for the data supply industry to
evolve to the same level.

So over the years companies like Opta have collected more
information. We've added new stats every year and we've added
more detail about some of the standard pieces of information.

This provides the media with new angles or interesting ways to
approach their coverage.

And the industry has evolved to provide things more quickly, so
that the demand for this information can be met as it happens.
Years ago, sometime after the final whistle would have been quick
enough, but now the supply side of the football data world has to
match the demand for live information.

So, what next for football data?

As with a lot of industries with big data at their core, better
analysis and presentation of this data is key to the next stage of
the evolution of football data.

At Opta, we speak to a lot of people who are focused on making
this future a reality. Hot topics include using big data sets
for predictive analytics (useful in the betting industry for
modelling and setting market prices) and infographic design (useful
in media and broadcast markets for making data sets more insightful
to all types of fan).

Whatever the future though, it is likely to include more data
rather than less. More stats, more information and more
platforms to consume them on.

In the world of football at least, it seems the geeks really
will inherit the earth.

1 Comments

The evolution of media has certainly changed the way football data is divulged and digested, but I think the next revolution is not going to be about the distribution of football data, but rather the creation of football information, by which I mean relating the statistical facts to each other in a way that explains and predicts performances and score lines.
Especially match prediction is something that should get much more attention and any model should be benchmarked on.
And I absolutely agree that this will all take more data and will benefit from it. A few years back there's been a Google presentation on "Big Data" and how computer processing development has led to changed paradigms: Instead of deciding beforehand what's being stored, due to a lack of available space and processing (which in turn restricts what can be worked on in the future), now simply everything gets stored and then used when needed down the line. From restrictive cataloging to full dumping and adaptive filtering. The more data there is, the easier it is leave preconceived paths, expand perspective and possibly find something new and better.
And we are still in the middle of that, with a lot of opportunities ahead for data and information in football.